09/21/2016
The lonely Tomahawk Bar is one of the few things left in Prewitt NM, a town once named Baca, but renamed for the brothers who opened a trading post there a century ago.
The building's cement block façade hides a Quonset hut, in which a rustic bar still sits...but is completely inaccessible because the current owner installed a small steel cage in the entry way, through which customers place and pay for their purchase. Apparently there has been a little too much trouble at the Tomahawk through the years.
But wait. There's more!
The Tomahawk sits atop the early roadway, original National Old Trails Road, and Route 66 until the 1930s. The purple line on the map shows a short segment of that old dirt road, while the blue pin shows the location of the Tomahawk.
A quarter of a mile away is a 1920s-era concrete navigation arrow. Behind the bar is the railroad, which came through town in 1881. There are actually two separate sections of track in the area, because the original A&P followed the contours more closely. Later, the ATSF added a second set of rails that ran much straighter. They are both used to this day.
The road in front was 1930s-1970s Route 66, and the freeway sits farther to the south. So much transportation history in this one town!
I'll drink to that.
